


Be My Fire

by Inu_Sama



Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Aged-up Aang, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, Major Character Injury, Psychological Trauma, Slow To Update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-09-22 04:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17053028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inu_Sama/pseuds/Inu_Sama
Summary: The body under him, a threat temporarily neutralised and possible hostage, was male and strong--why weren't they fighting back? Trying to get the upper hand? It wasn't like Aang could properly fight in his weakened state, even if the boy? Man? Wasn't combat trained(which he was, Aang could feel it) he'd easily be able to destabilise Aang's hold, shaky as it was.





	1. Reawakened

Aang woke slowly, thoughts sluggish as the fingers of sleep clawed at his conscious in an attempt to drag him back down into their depths like sirens capturing sailors. He felt at once viciously cold and terribly hot, the two sensations warring with each other until there was a fine layer of cold sweat covering his body. He shivered from the cold still clinging to his bones and panted from the heat burning his skin, teeth clenched and brows furrowed as he tried to remember how this came to be - how his existence had been reduced to the mercies of two conflicting states.

Voices floated in the periphery of his conscious mind, their words lost to him. Aang was vaguely aware of the passage of time by the way the voices faded in and out and changes in the air. There was one voice that was...easier to hear, the meaning of their words almost attainable.

"Is….et? He--ava...ke!"

But it was the hands on his skin that finally ripped the drowsiness from his mind, burning the roots. He remembered. He remembered the feeling of metal slashing through flesh and the wet, choking feeling of a pierced lung. He remembered Gyatso kissing him on the forehead with bloodied lips as he was bundled onto appa in the middle of the night, the sounds of their people screaming for mercy a horrifying tune carried by the harsh mountain winds. 

He remembered his mentor, his father, his  _ best friend _ , ordering him to  _ live _ , live and become the avatar the nations needed. He remembered struggling to breathe the longer they stayed high in the air, feeling like he was drowning as red stained his world. He remembered a bright flash of fire and his faithful friend being shot out of the air with a screech of pain. He remembered falling. He remembered drowning all over again, but this time his world was filled with blue.

He remembered blinding white light and voices bellowing in outrage, then it was cold and dark. It stayed that way for a long time, caught between living and dying, light and dark, cold and hot, drowning and breathing. It was so painful so--

Before he knew what was happening, Aang slammed the person hard onto the ground with a hand around their neck, crouched over them like a rabid animal. His breathing was harsh and stuttered, grey eyes wide and darting around wildly as his panicked mind catalogued everything around him. He was in a cabin done in muted reds, browns and golds. From the subtle swaying of the ground, he knew he was on a boat of some sort, a big one. 

The body under him, a threat temporarily neutralised and possible hostage, was male and strong--why weren't they fighting back? Trying to get the upper hand? It wasn't like Aang could properly fight in his weakened state, even if the boy? Man? Wasn't combat trained(which he was, Aang could feel it) he'd easily be able to destabilise Aang's hold, shaky as it was.

But he wasn't, and he didn't. Aang inadvertently lightened his grip on the man's neck when pain lanced through his side and he gasped, fingers coming away bloody. The golden eyes watching him were molten with something he couldn't identify, was it pity? Or anger? His mind was fraying at the edges, his grip on reality slipping as the ice slowly seeped back into his body. The man opened his mouth as if to say something but there was a shout to their right and Aang's head snapped up to see several armed men with spears crowding the doorway. He swayed and tried to blink the sudden dizziness from his vision before a second wave of searing agony choked him. Aang cried out, pushing the man away from him as a familiar wet coughing tore up his throat.

The small tatami mat was splattered with blood as liquid curdled in his lungs, his battered body wheezing for air. He was drowning again, it felt like he'd been drowning most of his life and he was sick of it. Aang vaguely heard the man with the scar on his left eye order the others to stand down and he collapsed onto his side in relief. His already strenuous hold on consciousness was breaking, slipping through his fingers like sand as he tried to plug the hole in his side with clumsy hands.

"....ne...Medic!" The man shouted, rushing to his side to roll him onto his back. His voice sounded distant and Aang knew he didn't have much time left before sleep would take him again, maybe for good this time. He squeezed out a bitter laugh, blood running down his cheek and into his ear.

"Fu...fuck--s-sake...can't even….die-ah!-right…." He panted, eyes sliding closed as warm fingers ran through his hair, untangling the knots of white he hadn't noticed tickling his shoulders before. A voice sounded above him, but the words were once again lost to him as he was pulled into darkness.


	2. Firebenders

**Zuko**

The Avatar was not what Zuko expected, but he was glad some idiots from the Southern Water Tribe had set off that distress signal. The vessel stranded on their lands was ancient, one of the last warships to be deployed if his uncle was to be believed. 

Zuko wondered if it was a twist of fate the flare was still able to activate after almost a century. Even more for his ship to have been driving nearby enough to see it.

Zuko sighed and then snatched his hand back when he realised his traitorous fingers had found their way back to those silky white strands. He looked down at the sleeping face next to him, alabaster brows still pinched together in pain. 

The medic had done a wonderful job patching the other boy up, but she said there was nothing she could do for the pain. The Avatar would just have to ride it out until his fever broke. 

Zuko didn't want to believe that someone that looked his age was THE Avatar - he was supposed to be well over a hundred years old! - but there was something... _ magnetic _ about him that made something in Zuko sit up and take notice. 

Power practically  _ dripped  _ from every pore - even in such a weakened state! He'd be a fool not to take at least that seriously.

The Water Tribe girl's story of him falling out of a ball of ice came to the forefront of his mind then and he scoffed. That seemed even  _ less  _ believable! 

Though it would explain why no one had heard from him in so long and why Time hadn't bitch slapped him in the face yet--it was still too unusual for him to just outright believe. 

No one would be able to survive, frozen in the ice, for so many years - especially so heavily injured.

His eyes inevitably traced the path of the boy's tattoos - tattoos he'd only ever seen in books when he'd been studying the Airbenders. 

The dark blue almost black stripes followed the length of his arms to form an arrow on the back of his calloused hands. They also wrapped around his pale neck almost like a collar, which apparently signified he was a bastard in their monastery. 

He'd read that bastards were treated little better than slaves, they were unwanted stains in their own community. It wasn't in their religion to kill, but that didn't mean the Monks didn't try everything else they possibly could to show their displeasure. 

That had never sat right with him, branding children with something like that was cruel. Their whole lives and how people treated them was determined by something they couldn't control. 

He touched the burn mark over his eye and pressed his lips into a grim line. It was much like his own childhood, for all that he wasn't a bastard.

Though the irony was not lost on him. The Avatar; a bastard. Zuko would have loved to see the elders' faces when they found out. His good mood dissipated when he was reminded that  _ the last Airbender in the world _ was struggling to breathe on the futon next to him. 

He'd seen the burns surrounding the wound in the Avatar's side and could easily put the pieces together. 

Zuko had not been happy when he first learned his great grandfather had completely wiped out an  _ entire  _ branch of bending simply because Airbenders were the next in the cycle to host the Avatar.

No matter which way he looked at it, mass genocide would never be a good idea to him. It was stupid and unnecessary and now there were no more Airbenders left. An entire race, an entire  _ culture  _ was just....gone. 

It was a scary thought, one that made it so much easier for the Fire Nation to take control of the other bending communities. 

After all, no one wanted their legacy to be completely erased from history - even if that's exactly what was happening anyway with the Fire Nation's suppression of Bending outside their own.

The Avatar's hostile reaction when he first woke up was completely understandable, warranted even. 

It was why he hadn't fought back when the boy slammed him to the ground with more strength than such a weakened body should allow, which was evidenced by how quickly that strength left him when his wound reopened.

There was a lot you could tell from just a person's body. The Avatar's hands were calloused and littered with tiny scars, most likely from hard labour - which would make sense if he were seen as a bastard by the monks. 

Knowing what he did about them, Zuko imagined the Avatar didn't have a happy childhood. He probably wasn't allowed to play with the other kids, or play at all. Still, despite the way they treated their own, they didn't deserve to die. 

Apart from those few who followed that particular law to the T, many  _ innocent  _ lives were lost in his great grandfather's powertrip. 

Many innocent lives were  _ still  _ being taken, it'd just fallen to his father's shoulders to dole out. Due to the sheer stubbornness of some of the communities, the Fire Nation hadn't been able to completely subdue them in Zuko's great grandfather's time. 

So it had fallen down the Royal Line and it looked like his father will be the one to succeed if something isn't done. If the Avatar doesn't step up and do his damn job.

Zuko sighed again, feeling like that's all he was good for these days as he watched the rise and fall of the Avatar's breaths as they evened out and the pain seemed to ease from his delicate features. 

The other boy seemed to be a study in contradictions; how could someone so fragile-looking hold so much power?


End file.
